The Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) provides life-saving and time-critical support to millions of crisis-affected men, women and children around the world. Three quarters of these people live in rural areas and depend mainly on agriculture for their food security and income. Timely support to rural households, enabling them to continue or restart agricultural production is therefore a vital pre-condition for rapid, effective and durable recovery.

CAP 2010 – List of Countries

This document summarizes contributions of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to the 13 appeals prepared in close consultation with partners for the 2010 CAP. It includes a brief overview of the agriculture and food security requirements in each situation, together with highlights of FAO’s response and funding needs for: Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Nepal, Somalia, the Sudan, Uganda, West Africa, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

The majority of appeals in this year’s CAP refer to protracted crises that have continued for a number of years. While this bears witness to the scale of the challenge faced by communities, governments and humanitarian partners to build sustainable exit strategies, there are strong signs of progress.

For example, in addition to the core focus on timely asset replacement, many of FAO’s contributions include increased emphasis on building the capacity of local and national actors to prepare and respond to agricultural threats and emergencies and heightened attention towards disaster risk management.

There is also a strong emphasis on building humanitarian coordination capacities, often in close collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP) and FAO’s other humanitarian partners. Stronger coordination mechanisms at country and local levels will ensure improved needs-based responses and increase humanitarian impact, contributing to both the rapid availability of food and the timely restoration of agricultural livelihoods.

We have a moral imperative to help farmers, pastoralists and fishers affected by crises to re-establish their food production capacity, because it is their lifeline. The extent to which FAO will be able to respond to this imperative will in part depend on the contribution of the donor community. We hope that your commitment will remain strong.